


Loyalty

by sodapeach



Category: VICTON (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, M/M, Mafia themes, No Major Character Death, drabble gone rogue, i did it for the aesthetic, if you squint there’s angst, mafia violence is referenced but not depicted, no injuries, some rootin tootin gangster shootin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23501557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodapeach/pseuds/sodapeach
Summary: Seungsik’s loyalty is put on the line when he gets sent in for a hit on a rival family member.
Relationships: Han Seungwoo/Kang Seungsik
Comments: 14
Kudos: 114





	Loyalty

**Author's Note:**

> So this was based on a 100 word drabble I posted on twitter a few days ago that I wanted to expand a LITTLE bit. Oops???? Anyways I hope this is an entertaining read???

Seungsik sat in the back of a black car shielded by tinted windows, but still after all these years he felt himself slumping down in the seats afraid to be seen. The paranoia kept him up more than work did, but that was part of the job in itself. Had he known what he was signing up for, he might have sought out a second opinion for the sake of his sanity, but the money was too good go turn down, and you know what they say about offers you can’t refuse.

The money had been better than he expected, the better he got at his job, but lately he hadn’t been very good at all in the sense of responsibility and duty, less so about his moral compass. If that was ever considered, he hadn’t been good in a very long time.

“Where are we going,” he finally said. 

The driver was good at ignoring him or anyone else in the  _ family  _ who climbed in his back seat, never asking questions, never objecting, never thinking aloud, and Seungsik wasn’t sure he had ever heard his voice before. The driver was also good at making whoever sat in the backseat feel obligated to keep quiet, and Seungsik liked to  _ talk  _ especially when he was nervous. He could never quite keep his mouth shut which made him a better frontman than a footman, but if they said shoot, he shot whether that was with words or with the friend sitting on the seat next to him, silver and at the moment unloaded.

His eyes moved to the rearview mirror, cautiously surprised. “The Castle, sir.”

Seungsik shifted in his seat. The Castle was a large mansion owned by the family he worked for that was shared with another family in an unorthodox divide between two brothers at respectable odds with each other. Rather than being used as a home or a headquarters, it was a peaceful meeting ground for the nine families to sit down and work out deals that were better settled over drinks than street scuffles. Bloodshed was bad for business in the new age. Money was in blackmail and political warfare not horseheads and broken teeth so most of Seungsik's job had been narrowed down to sweet talking and schmoozing, but there next to him was the reminder that he was not a businessman. 

There wasn’t a meeting scheduled. He would have known  _ that much _ hence the surprise on the driver’s face when he asked, but other than the message delivered to him the night before, he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to be doing. 

_ Noon. Piece. One.  _

It was simple enough that he knew what time he was supposed to be there, that he was supposed to bring his gun, and that he only had one target. The who, the where, and the why, though, would have to reveal themselves when he got there he guessed. He swallowed. It had been so long since he had last killed someone that he wasn’t sure he remembered how to do it right, and inside The Castle? That was against the rules.

So he came to the conclusion that they were setting him up. If he had any true sense of self preservation, he would have put his one bullet in the back of the driver’s head, taken the car to the docks, and paid some inspector off to sneak him into a cargo crate headed for China, but maybe it was the respect he had for the driver who never asked questions or the curiosity to find out what waited for him inside or some newfound humanity from making too many distanced business deals that made him keep his hands in his lap. 

If this was a setup, his family would be taken care of as a condolence. If he had to go to prison, so be it. It was just prison. It was part of the job, but something in his stomach told him that this wasn’t right. This wasn’t  _ business.  _ This wasn’t  _ part of the job. _

His phone chimed as a new message came through.  _ Grandfather.  _ He wasn’t  _ his  _ grandfather, but the patriarch of the family he worked for. One of the two brothers who owned The Castle, actually, and he had never messaged Seungsik directly before. So it wasn’t a setup, but a secret hit hidden from the other brothers? Part of him was relieved, but the other part had a dozen more questions rush to his mind.  _ What the fuck am  _ I  _ doing here? _

He checked the message, even more nervous to read his direct orders for the first time, but when he opened it, there was only one word:  _ Loyalty. _

Seungsik furrowed his brows. Loyalty? He had been nothing but loyal. He had never taken a bribe, and he definitely wasn’t a rat. He had done everything they said since he was a fifteen year old street rat passing messages around hidden in newspaper folds or flower bouquets like the one he had received the night before. He had never betrayed the family, and even when he had the chance moments ago to run for his life, he didn't take it. How could they question him after all this time? But it was just one bullet wasn’t it? One shot to prove himself? A life for a life.

He closed his eyes and pressed his head against the seat before wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He was going to be fine. All he had to do was take out one person, and he could go home.

And then he thought, what if that bullet was meant for himself?

He shuddered. He hadn’t done anything that warranted that, and he was just getting himself all worked up for nothing. He was just doing another job, just with a lot less information than he was used to.

“Ten minutes,” the driver said as a courtesy. That could have been counted as the second time Seungsik had ever heard his voice. He must have sensed how nervous and confused he was.

“Thank you,” he said.

Ten minutes later, the car pulled through the iron gates, and he saw the house on the horizon. It was a miniature Versailles with its own swirling grounds and a fountain in the center that drowned out conversations with its incessant splashing. 

He put the gun in the holster next to his ribs after loading it with the clip under the seat in a hidden compartment in case someone unwanted ever went fishing around where they weren’t supposed to. This was it. No point in stalling, he had work to do.

When he went inside, the housekeeper directed him towards the library for his  _ business  _ making all of this feel too much like a game of Clue rather than a work hit.  _ Seungsik in the library with the gun.  _ But if they wanted it taken care of there, then that was where he would do it, although he wished he could apologize to the housekeeper for the mess that he was about to make, but he supposed she was used to it by now.

He stopped at the door and hesitated briefly before opening it.

He turned back to her and smiled. “We won’t be needing anything so don’t bother sending anyone in.”

“Of course,” she said, not an idiot. Of course she knew how this worked, but still, he didn’t want to cause any accidents or lifelong trauma when he didn’t have to. These were just people who needed to work to live. Just like him, he guessed.

He put his hand on the brass handle and pulled, the heavy wooden door sticking from the humidity. It was time to go to work. 

When he walked in, he fully expected to see someone they were paying off or even one of the other brothers who had fallen through the ranks, but when he saw  _ his _ face, he almost spilled the contents of his stomach onto the ridiculously ornate rug on the floor.

“Seungwoo,” he said, knowing it wasn’t a name he should have known so comfortably.

Seungwoo sighed and scratched his head. “ _ Goddamnit _ .” 

_ Loyalty. I’m a loyal soldier. I would never betray my family. I will die for this life. But I won’t shoot him. _

Seungsik closed the door behind him and walked towards the window, pulling the curtains closed.

“No one can see inside,” Seungwoo pointed out.

“It makes me feel better,” he said.

“Should I light a candle?”

“Are you really telling jokes right now?”

“I have to say something,” Seungwoo said. “And it’s kind of funny.”

“Why are you here?” 

“I got a call,” he said. “I answered.”

“Great,” Seungsik said.

“Why are you here?”

“Someone sent me flowers,” he said.

“And you came anyway?” Seungwoo almost laughed.

“How was I supposed to know they were for  _ me,”  _ Seungsik asked. “We were so careful.”

“Were we,” he sighed, moving towards the bar to pour himself to drink. “Do you want something?”

“No, thank you,” he said. 

Seungwoo pulled the glass stopper off of the top of the brandy, making the room smell like a noxious cistern. Seungsik scrunched his nose, already feeling nauseated from seeing him like this and knowing how fucked they both were. Seungwoo lifted the bottle to his nose and sniffed. “I don’t think I will either.”

“Too strong for you?”

“If I’m going to die, I don’t want this to be the last thing I ever taste,” he said. “I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.”

Seungsik let out a weak laugh. “Why on earth did you do that?”

“I don’t like to kill on an empty stomach... just in case,” Seungwoo said.

“Just in case,” he repeated, swallowing against a dry throat. People on the outside thought they were cold blooded killers, but sometimes the part of them that made them human overcame them and made them sick for days as a punishment for their mortal sins. And it was better not to throw up at a crime scene, so often they would starve themselves before a job  _ just in case. _ “Same order?”

“Did you eat?”

“No,” Seungsik admitted.

Seungwoo hummed. “Same order then. Do you want to go have lunch after this?”

“Please stop joking around,” he pleaded.

“Why? Is it pissing you off?”

“A little bit,” he said. “Yeah, actually.”

“Good,” Seungwoo said, pushing the unused glass of brandy back across the wooden bartop. 

Seungsik sighed and pushed his hair behind his ears, feeling too anxious to deal with Seungwoo’s antics. He took the gun out of his holster and set it on the table, the barrel perpendicular to them both, and let out an anguished, frustration groan that reverberated in his throat.

“Don’t put your weapon down,” Seungwoo scolded him, getting serious all of the sudden.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” he said.

“That’s a stupid habit,” he said. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Please,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I’m holding right now, does it.”

“Pick it up,” he said seriously.

“Or what,” Seungsik baited. 

“Don’t pick it up then,” Seungwoo said. “But when you get your tail blown off by some kid in scrappy running shoes and someone else’s suit because your hands are empty, I won’t send flowers to your parents.”

“Will you now,” he picked up the gun back up off the table and kept it in his hand, his finger just off the trigger.

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know if I want to give you the chance,” he said simply.

Seungwoo nodded, his lips thin. 

So they were trapped inside the library together with the same goal, and as much as they could joke around with and bait each other, it still came down to one word.  _ Loyalty. _

Seungsik started to sweat much harder than he did in the car. He loosened his tie with his free hand and considered downing the whole bottle of brandy that Seungwoo had just then pretended to pour from that probably cost more than his monthly rent did.

Seungwoo was silent, keeping the rest of his jokes to himself, but the way the corners of his mouth pulled down made his chest ache. Neither one of them wanted to be there, and there was a time that seeing him frown like that would have sent Seungsik across the room towards him desperate to make it better. He frowned. 

The past was supposed to be something that was referred to after a long period of time, but in reality, the last time he saw Seungwoo was only a few hours before midnight just the night before about an hour before he received his orders, and they parted happily. So they had been caught, finally, after sneaking around for years. Sleeping with the enemy was stupid and a rookie mistake, but they had fallen in love slowly over time meeting each other for work, both being in opposite shadows at the same meetings which was probably more stupid in the long run considering their current position. For years, Seungwoo had been his only constant, and now he was his end.

“So what do we do now,” Seungsik asked.

“I guess what we came here to do,” Seungwoo said. “That’s what we do right?”

His voice was cold and uncaring like he had heard from himself before a kill. So that was it then. Seungwoo had resolved himself on his prepared empty stomach to do what he came to do, and Seungsik had to do the same. This was just a part of the job. He had to clean up his own mistake.

“You think I’m afraid of you,” he asked as he paced the library, the heels of his boots scuffing against the wooden floors.

“Of course you are,” Seungwoo said as he propped himself back against a bookshelf stacked with forged business logs, old law books, and unopened encyclopedias. He shoved his hands in his pockets nonchalantly and sighed like he was bored. “Try standing still.”

Seungsik glared at him with a thinned mouth. Even then he was barely taking things seriously, and it was starting to get on his nerves. Did this not hurt him? Was being here not ripping him apart? Did he really mean that little to him in the end, or was he just business as usual?

“How am I supposed to stay still when I’m trapped in here with you,” he asked, waving the gun in his hand around like it wasn’t loaded. Somehow that made him feel better. It wasn’t a thing that could kill someone he loved if he could sling it around like an admittedly heavy plastic toy.

“Who would you rather be trapped in here with,” Seungwoo asked, tilting his head to the side with feigned sympathy.

“Literally anyone else,” he said. “Because then I could go home and see you again and not have to do this.”

“So do it,” he said quietly. “You can go home.”

Seungsik finally stopped pacing and took a heavy breath. “Don’t you have orders?”

“Of course,” Seungwoo said.

“Can’t you see how fucked we are right now,” Seungsik demanded. “ _ We _ can’t go home.  _ You _ can go home or  _ I _ can go home, but there is no  _ we  _ anymore. Do I mean so little to you that that isn’t driving you crazy? Like really, am I fucking stupid?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said calmly.

“I know you didn’t say that,” he said, swinging the gun around some more to make himself feel better. “You haven’t said anything at all helpful, and it’s driving me crazy. How can you be so calm right now?”

“Who said I’m going to follow them?”

Seungwoo stood up and cracked his neck. He reached for his suit jacket and pulled it open to reveal that he came unarmed. Seungsik’s hands fell to his side.

“What the fuck did you do,” he asked, his voice shaking.

“I got flowers last night,” he said. “They were pretty and white, and I thought they were for someone else, but who else could they have been for if not for me? I never said  _ we  _ could go home. I said  _ you.” _

Seungsik scratched his own temple with the barrel before sitting the gun back down and plopping himself down into one of the high backed reading chairs. “You idiot.”

“No feelings my ass,” he said, tired. “I had kind of hoped they would send in someone uglier and more annoying, but this is just pretty fucking cruel, isn’t it.”

“ _ Loyalty,”  _ Seungsik said as an answer. “That’s what the big boss told me before I pulled in.”

Seungwoo snorted, flashing a genuine smile at the irony. “Who are you loyal to, Seungsik?”

He thought for a moment, looking over the dusty books and wondering why he had to do this in a place so foreign and pretentious. This wasn’t home. This was a meeting place for people who made their living telling him to bribe, to kill, to extort, and it was the place where they wanted him to rip his own heart out to prove himself. And for what?

“You,” he said. 

Seungwoo blinked and hung his head, the words stinging him and catching him off guard. “Wrong answer.”

“I didn’t know this was a pop quiz,” he said. “What happens if I fail?”

“Now, who’s cracking jokes,” he said.

“It’s contagious,” Seungsik said bitterly. “Now that I know where we both stand, I have to laugh.”

“See,” he said. “You were just a little late to the party.”

After a long pause, Seungsik sat up and cleared his throat. “So what do we do now?”

Seungwoo’s eyes flitted down to the gun and back up to him, too fast to read what he was thinking. If he had changed his mind about coming unarmed then Seungsik finally understood the importance of never setting one’s gun down on the table, but for some reason he wasn’t afraid, the word loyalty hanging in his mind like a grandfather clock at midnight. 

He twisted his mouth and smirked ever so slightly in a way that made the hair on the back of Seungsik’s neck stand up before leaning forward.

“Well,” he said, rubbing his chin. “You could shoot me.”

“Or?”

Seungwoo looked at him and smiled like he wasn’t afraid of death, the mob, or rejection.

“We could run for it.”

“From two families?” Seungsik almost coughed.

“If we’re going to die either way, wouldn’t it be fun if we made it  _ really  _ annoying for everyone else who isn’t us?”

“Wouldn’t running be the most annoying for us,” he laughed.

“You can still shoot me,” Seungwoo gestured towards the gun on the table. “By all means.”

“No, I wanna run,” he said, the adrenaline already coursing its way through his body. With a plan in motion, or at least the promise of one, the two of them looked at each other like they were on fire. It was one thing to run from the law but  _ two  _ crime families? There was no one else he could have been that stupid with. They both stood up and moved towards each other. Seungwoo’s hands went to Seungsik’s suit, but then the sound of a car door made them both freeze.

_ “Shit,”  _ Seungwoo whispered.

They ran to the window and pulled back the curtain just enough to see a row of cars lined up out front with enough guys to cause a problem.

“They sent cleaners in,” Seungsik said, ready to bash his own head against the glass.

“You’d think they don’t trust us very much,” Seungwoo said, putting his hand against his lower back.

“Are you feeling for another gun?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“I only brought the one,” he said.

“Yeah, I got that,” Seungwoo said.

“And you left yours at home,” Seungsik realized in horror. Even if it was just him alone versus a small army, he only had one clip and he wasn’t  _ that  _ good of a shot to not risk missing any. There was no way in hell even if he was at his best that he could cover them both.

“Yep,” he said, strained.

“Why did you come unarmed,” he hissed as the cleaners moved towards the door as a unit, ready to finish the job that neither of them were able to do.

“I was trying to be romantic,” he hissed back.

“Good going, Romeo,” Seungsik whispered.

“Did it work?”

“A little bit,” he admitted. “But that is  _ really  _ not the point right now.”

“I needed a confidence boost,” Seungwoo said. “Are they inside?”

“Yeah,” Seungsik said. 

“Great, get back,” he said.

“Wh-?”

Seungwoo ran to the back of the room and grabbed a stone bust off of the book shelf of some classical composer that Seungsik didn’t know and barely gave him a chance to jump out of the way before smashing it against a window. 

Seungsik ran to the door and locked them inside while Seungwoo repeatedly smashed the bust against the glass, quite loudly he might have added. Footsteps ran to the door, and it rattled as the men tried to get in. 

“Open up, fellas,” one of them said. “We just wanna talk.”

“Hurry!” He shouted. 

With one finally blow, the glass shattered, and he cleared the pane enough to get them through. A gunshot rang out behind them as one of the men fired at the lock, but they were already outside on the run. 

“Where are we going,” he asked as they both ran through the courtyard to the hedges for cover.

“I didn’t get that far yet,” Seungwoo said, out of breath. “Got any ideas?”

Seungsik looked around and spotted a familiar car at the end of the path. “What if it’s stupid?”

“I think we’re past that,” he said, crouched down and wild eyed.

“Then yeah, I’ve got a plan,” he said. “Follow me.”

The two of them ran towards the car, and he knew that even if he had to pull the driver out himself, the guy would be fine. The others wouldn’t kill him because he didn’t know anything, so he had nothing to feel guilty about. Shots fired behind them as they ran, but there was no stopping them at that point. They were either going to escape together or not at all. 

He banged on the door and opened the driver’s side to him reading a book while he waited for Seungsik. “Get out.”

“What?” He said, surprised. 

Seungwoo opened the passenger door and waved him off. “Hurry, before he shoots you.”

“WHAT?!” 

“I’m not gonna shoot you,” Seungsik said before a bullet hit the trunk, scaring all three of them. “They might, though! Run!”

“Get in,” he said to them both.  _ “Now!” _

Seungwoo looked at Seungsik for a moment before getting in the passenger seat. Trusting his instincts, Seungsik ran to the back and dove in just in time for the driver to pull away.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” he shouted as his tires spun in the gravel. The car fishtailed down the path as it barrelled towards the gates that were slowly closing, threatening to lock them in. “Hold on!”

The driver tucked his head down as he accelerated, and Seungsik and Seungwoo both covered their heads with their arms as he smashed the car through the gates with a loud crash that triggered both airbags. The car filled with smoke as Seungwoo tried to push down the bags out of their faces so the driver could see to drive away.

“Why are you helping us,” Seungsik asked as they sped away to freedom.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice shaking. “I think it was the fact that you were holding a gun on me.”

“I said get out!” He shouted. “I wasn’t going to shoot you!”

“Yeah, I get that now!” The driver said. “Fuck, they don’t pay me enough for this!”

“If you pull over now and jump out, you can say we threatened you,” Seungwoo said. 

He shook his head and checked his reflection. “You think they care about us? Drivers and maids? Nah, if they catch me, they’ll pull my fingernails off.”

“Is that what your family does,” Seungwoo asked, appalled.

“I’ve never pulled anyone’s fingernails off,” Seungsik insisted.

“No, you just shoot people,” the driver said. “You all just fucking shoot people.”

“I’m obviously not going to shoot anyone right now! What about him!”

“I’m not armed,” Seungwoo pointed out.

“Stupidly,” he said, dropping down in the seat.

“It was romantic,” he reminded him.

“Romantic my ass,” Seungsik said, placing the cool metal of his own firearm against his forehead.

“Put on your seatbelt,” the driver said. “I’m not trying to get a traffic ticket right now. I have a perfect driving record, you know.”

Seungsik blinked. “Congratulations.”

He sat back and put his seatbelt on, compelled to do what he was told after going rogue only moments before.

“Thank you,” he said. “So where are we going?”

“The border,” Seungwoo said.

“The  _ what?!”  _ Both Seungsik and the driver shouted.

“They can’t reach us there,” he said, and I’ve got a few friends who could sneak us in. 

Seungsik blinked. “We’re going to get shot.”

“We’re probably going to get shot either way,” he said. 

“What about a port?”

“My family owns most of them,” he said. “We wouldn’t even make it to the water.”

“Fuck,” he swore. “So we’re going north?”

“Looks like it,” Seungwoo said, taking his tie off and tossing it into the floorboard.

“And you’re sure we can get in?”

“I’m pretty sure,” he said.

“Pretty sure?!”

“I used to help smuggle things across the border,” he said. “Alcohol and cigarettes and cell phones and sometimes people if the price was right.”

“Do we have money for that?” 

Seungwoo looked back at him and wiggled his eyebrows. “I have money for anything. I got sent to die, remember?”

“Right,” he said. “We’re going north.”

“We’ll head north and then we’ll split off to Beijing before heading to Mongolia,” Seungwoo said. “They’ll expect us to go south via Jeju either to Shanghai or Fukuoka so that’ll give us a few days to move the slow way.”

“You’re good at this,” Seungsik said.

“I’m a smuggler, babe, it’s what I do,” he shrugged.

“Won’t they know to go north then,” he pointed out.

“Side job,” he said. “Threatening old men with dirty pictures isn’t nearly as much fun as getting illegal things in illegal places.”

Seungsik closed his eyes and laughed. “I can’t believe we’re running like this.”

“I’ve never been to Mongolia before,” the driver mused, and that was the first time he had heard him  _ muse  _ since he had known him. He was talking a lot that day, and Seungsik suspected it was the added adrenaline. 

Seungwoo looked at the driver and smiled, amused. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Hanse,” he said, swallowing. “Do Hanse.”

“Well, Hanse, have you ever worn a disguise before,” Seungwoo asked. 

Seungsik raised his eyebrow.

“Not that I can recall,” Hanse said.

“There’s a first time for everything,” he said. “Now, do you mind if we pick a few things up before we head that way? Running is expensive.”

“Sure,” he sighed. “Why not, right?”

“You’ve sure got this all figured out for someone who was ready to die not just fifteen minutes ago,” Seungsik said.

Seungwoo’s ears burned as his eyes darted towards the driver who was now no longer a background piece in a mobster’s game, shy all of a sudden. Hanse respectfully kept his eyes on the road, pretending like he couldn’t hear them like he was used to doing.

“I’ve been waiting to run with you for a while,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

“And your side job?”

“I am nothing if not resourceful,” he said.

So Seungwoo knew this day would come, Seungsik decided. Of course they couldn’t keep sneaking around forever especially when their business was blackmail and secrets at a high price. Everyone probably knew that they had betrayed their families years ago by choosing each other over the life, and the man in the driver’s seat who had kept his mouth shut for years probably knew the whole time too, but it didn’t quite make sense that he wanted to go with them when he could have turned them in for a fat settlement long ago.

It was all highly suspicious.

“You’ve been saving on the side for this,” he asked.

“Yes,” Seungwoo said.

“And you’re going north with us?”

“Yes,” Hanse said.

“Why do I feel like I’m missing something,” he asked.

“I don’t know about him, but I’m sick of sitting in a car all night while yall go around murdering half the city,” Hanse spat out. “You know I’m not allowed to quit?! I’m not even allowed to get fired, and what’s worse, I’m not even allowed to speak because if one of you assholes, not  _ you two of course,  _ but the guys chasing us right now realizes I know everything you guys do, they can drop my whole family in the river!”

“Sorry,” the two of them muttered.

“I should have just been an Uber driver,” he said, bitter. “Consider this my resignation.”

“Got it,” they both said. 

“And you’re not scared of us,” Seungwoo asked, looking at him suspiciously.

“Please, you two are about as scary as a couple of rubber ducks,” he said. “You’re not even armed, and he spent the whole ride to The Castle shitting himself in the backseat. If you were going to kill me, you would have done it back at the mansion.”

“I think I liked it better when you didn’t talk so much,” Seungsik said through his teeth.

“Tell me more about Seungsik shitting himself on his way to meet me,” Seungwoo said, wistfully. “I want to paint a picture.”

“I felt like I was taking my teenage son to his first unchaperoned date,” Hanse sighed.

“I was nervous because I had to murder someone,” Seungsik cried out. “I didn’t even know it was going to be you!”

“They sent us flowers,” he said, baffled. “How did you not know?”

“If I knew I was going to be sent in to kill my own boyfriend, I would have bailed last night.”

“Boyfriend?” Seungwoo said. “Wow, this is getting serious.”

“We are literally on the run from two different families on our way to  _ sneak across the border.  _ This  _ has  _ been serious.”

Seungwoo turned around and winked. “You’re fun when you’re flustered.”

“Is this what I signed up for,” Hanse said under his breath. “Like a gay Thelma and Louise.”

“Thelma and Louise weren’t gay?” Seungwoo asked.

“No, Thelma had that thing with Brad Pitt, remember?” Hanse pointed out.

“I thought he was just a beard.”

“You can’t use _ Brad Pitt  _ as a beard,” Hanse scoffed.

“I would,” Seungwoo mumbled.

“That’s not how a beard works,” Seungsik said.

“Didn’t Thelma and Louise die in the end?” Hanse asked, interrupting.

_ “Uhhhh,”  _ Seungsik said.

“We’re different,” Seungwoo said. “There’s three of us.”

“Right,” Hanse said. “I should have had breakfast this morning.

“Me too,” Seungwoo said.

“Me too.”

Somehow the three of them ended up on the run together — Seungsik and Seungwoo just wanting to escape their families so that they could both live, and Hanse choosing to run with them so that he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life as a mob chauffeur. 

They met one of Seungwoo’s contacts outside of town where they changed into plain clothes and switched to a car that hadn’t eaten iron bars for lunch that day. With enough money to bribe a president, they headed towards the border where they pretended to be clueless foreign tourists until they got far enough in that their guide could help switch them for a second set of clothes. 

Unable to turn back after that, they crossed the border on foot where the fence went unguarded for miles and headed for Dandong to catch a train to Beijing where about seven hours later the three of them hid in a cheap hotel with no cameras or anyone to care about three men had just jumped a border dressed as farmers after sneaking over another dressed as foreign tourists. Being able to speak rudimentary English and Mandarin had proven to be useful, and it seemed that they had succeeded in escaping from the mob back home.

“We need to head to Mongolia tomorrow,” Seungwoo said. “I’m getting anxious.”

“Why Mongolia,” Hanse asked, on the floor with a box of takeout in front of him.

“Because we don’t have family there,” he said. “No friends or business contacts.”

“Where do we go once we get there,” he asked.

“It’s best that we don’t look anything up so we don’t leave a trail,” Seungsik answered for him. “So he doesn’t know.”

“That’s fun,” Hanse blinked.

“Yeah, sorry I should have given you a heads up,” Seungwoo said.

“No, it makes sense,” he said. “It’s just you got us this far.”

“It’s easier to smuggle things in from this side so I just followed the trail, but everything after paying off the guide has been a lucky guess,” Seungwoo admitted.

Seungsik swallowed. He had had so much confidence that Seungwoo knew what he was doing that he hadn’t thought to question if he was just making this shit up as he went along. But they were still alive so far so he must have done something right.

“We could live in a yurt,” Seungsik said to himself, staring off at a scuff on the floor.

“Do you want to live in a yurt,” Seungwoo asked.

“I might,” he said. “They look warm.”

“I think in Mongolia they’re called gers,” Hanse said.

“Doesn’t have the same ring to it,” Seungwoo said. 

Hanse hummed and nodded, too tired to care.

“What do you say, fellas,” Seungwoo slapped his own thighs. “Do we wanna go buy a ger and hide in the countryside or do we wanna see how many countries we can hop before they find us?”

“Let’s decide when we get there,” Seungsik said, falling back against the wall. “We’ve made enough big decisions this week.”

Seungwoo nodded and returned to his food while Seungsik watched him quietly. He thought back to the text message he had received only a couple of days before that felt like a lifetime ago. _ Loyalty.  _

He had proven himself, hadn’t he? He had known no one more loyal to another person that he and Seungwoo were to each other. Betraying their oaths was a shame they would never comfortably be able to let go of, but the family had given them a choice without believing that they could choose the unexpected.  _ Him or us.  _

The decision to choose him over the family was easy. He never once hesitated because that was the only loyalty he knew for himself, and if that meant he was going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder or hidden in a ger, then so be it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! There might be (ok there will be) some inaccuracies for their smuggling route because I have never actually done that before but let’s just pretend that’s legit ah
> 
> Anyways I hope you liked this!! I can be found on twitter @hugsubin


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